Nine Lives
by Chrystler
Summary: "Write. Please. Write me another life."  AU future fic - departs from canon from S5 Ep 'Memoirs Of An Invisible Dan'. Muses are fickle. And sometimes they get married.
1. Chapter 1

He gets used to London's rumbling grey autumn days. Instinctively turns up his collar as he emerges from the fug of the Tube into the damp cool of the streets; one in a crowd of muffled coffee-cup carrying commuters. It takes him a few months, but soon he prides himself on his grasp of the city's hunker-munker geography – no avenues and cross streets here – and navigates easily from meetings in features editors' glass and white gloss offices to long liquid lunches in nicotine-stained Soho bars; ducking down back alleys and shortcutting across squares.

He takes work as a freelance journalist; a once-young gun-for-hire. He writes cute culture-clash columns for Sunday magazines. He writes earnest reviews of new fiction for a broadsheet newspaper. He writes wry profiles of bright young things, iconoclastic playwrights and ground-breaking digital artists, and considered interviews with revered novelists and renowned actors. He meets his subjects in the antiseptic opulence of 5-star hotel lobbies; atmospheres all too familiar from his previous New York existence.

Once every three months, he takes the Hammersmith & City line to his agent's offices where Angela updates him on the backlist sales for _Inside_ (steady enough for a three year-old book) and the follow up novella which was going to establish him as the new DeLillo (still sunken without trace). Each time she asks him what he's working on at the moment; drops hints that the time-window for another Upper East Side exposé has not yet passed with the public. Each time he shrugs and smiles in reply; sorry, he's got nothing.

.

He meets up with Jenny every couple of weeks at the old fashioned Italian coffee house down the road from her studio space. She's a blast of vivid kinetic energy in his papery, inky existence. Jenny loves London, loves her life here. Loves the career she's carving for herself among its street-smart punk-spirited fashion scene. Loves that the friends and collaborators she's gathered about her admire her for her talent and her determination, not her zip code or the name embossed on the soles of her shoes. She smiles easily these days, beneath natural blonde bangs and lightly kohl-ed lashes. Still teases her brother as much as ever for his social awkwardness, his tendency to over-analyse, but her jibes are laced with generous and genuine affection; a desire to fill his soul with the same kind of creative fire that lights her own.

He's sometimes so proud of his little sister, for the success she is engineering on her own terms; for her poised self-assurance; sometimes just for the sparkling lightness of her laugh; that he has to blink back tears just looking at her. Of course, the instant she spots such ridiculous fraternal frailty, she morphs seamlessly back into the merciless mocking teenage version of herself, "God, Dan, what's _wrong_ with you? You are such a _girl_!" He bats away the sachet of sugar she throws at him and laughs along with her. Later, on the way home, he wonders when it was that the gnawing hint of envy took root somewhere alongside his brotherly pride.

.

He learns to enjoy the subtle shifts between the seasons here. Winter's grasping grimy fingers slip slowly away with each gentle breath of shy Spring. He spends six weeks undercover in the City investigating stock market corruption. The resulting article is published by The Economist and sees him nominated for the Bevins prize. Suddenly he's somebody again.

.

He meets Freya at a book launch for a debut novel he's reviewed for The Guardian. She has almond eyes, honey blond hair and worked on the UK publicity campaign for Jeffrey Eugenides' latest novel. After four months of British-style dating – an after work drink (or seven), followed by the inevitable early morning walk of shame across the slumbering city - he moves into her Camden flat.

.

Oddly, the one who keeps in touch is Chuck. After his marriage to the eldest daughter of the Earl of Elgin and the purchase of a Scottish castle, the former _enfant terrible_ of the Upper East Side spends a significant part of the year on the European side of the Atlantic. Whenever he's in London, Chuck calls and they meet for cocktails at somewhere appropriately old-school; Claridges, the Ritz, sometimes the Savoy. Chuck keeps him up-to-date with Congressman Archibald's latest step on the long road his family fervently hope will lead to the White House, and fills him in on the current marital states of the various Van der Woodsens' (Eric happily settled with Sean, Lily dating a cosmetic surgeon - reverting to type since the divorce, Serena on husband number two – this one a sandal-wearing internet billionaire from Silicon Valley). It's a strange _entente cordial _that has settled between them, but it's sincere enough. He finds he enjoys Chuck's company now there's nothing either has left to play for. There's even enough water under the bridge for Jenny to join them on occasion; after all it was Chuck's initial investment that allowed her to start up her own small fashion line. A decision that was simply good business according to Chuck, given Jenny's rising star, but simple absolution to the Humphreys.

When Chuck's invited to a weekend shooting party in the English countryside he asks Dan to join him, in need of an American comrade-in-arms. Even in head-to-toe tweed there's no mistaking a Bass out of water, and he's both amused and relieved when Chuck makes their excuses after fifteen minutes of ferociously erratic aiming at non-existent grouse and they retreat back to the house's extensive library and equally extensive drinks cabinet to re-establish their colonial superiority.

In all their meetings they never once mention her. It's an unspoken agreement between them, but no less binding for that.

.

The rumbling grey autumn days roll around once again and settle their weight around his shoulders like an old overcoat. He makes the trip to Angela's offices, shrugs and smiles in the usual places and pretends not to hear her sighs of exasperation. Each time the royalty check she hands him is a little smaller than the last.

Freya invites him to spend Christmas with her parents. He experiences a raw wave of guilt as he waves Jenny off at the airport; his presents for Rufus bundled in among her luggage. He passes the holiday in his girlfriend's large red brick family home, which nestles unobtrusively behind a row of privet hedge in a typical middle-class Berkshire village; three-thousand miles and a whole world away from the Brooklyn loft and another universe entirely from the Van der Woodsen penthouse. He's charming and witty to Freya's mother; serious and manly with her father; and exchanges knowing winks and contraband cigarettes with her brothers. Freya demonstrates her delight with his performance every night in her childhood bedroom, a bank of teddy bears forming an uncomfortable audience.

At a quarter to midnight on New Year's Eve he calls Chuck in New York. Through Chuck's shouts over the noise of what sounds like quite a party, he learns that Chuck is seeing in the New Year with Anne-Marie, a United Airlines stewardess, while his wife celebrates the same turn of the clock at the Scottish castle with Sir Robert Eaton, the husband of one of her old school friends. Chuck sounds more sanguine about the situation than Dan would in his place, making much of his relief at being spared another year of bagpipes and choruses of _Auld Lang Syne_, but it was ever thus.

"Well, countdown's started. I'd better find Freya. Good to speak to you. Happy New Year, Chuck." "Same to you, Humphrey," replies Chuck in a rye-soaked voice. The strange thing is, it strikes him as he hangs up, they both mean it.

.

In February in an old packing warehouse in Covent Garden, Jenny shows a small collection for the first time at London Fashion Week. The front row isn't thronged with wall-to-wall A-listers but enough of the right people are there to ensure the message gets out that Jenny Humphrey is a talent to watch. In among the fashionistas, applauding more loudly than anyone as the designer takes her bow, are three slightly incongruous figures. Rufus is fit to burst with parental pride from the moment the first model takes to the runway to the sound of an early Lincoln Hawk track. Chuck pretends to be there purely to reap the rewards of his investment foresight… and to pick up models. And as for him, well, he's just glad that one Humphrey is living up to their potential.

.

She flies into town for Fashion Week, naturally, but the world would have to spin off its axis before she took a seat at a Jenny Humphrey show. The fashion weeklies carry shots of her on the front row at Christopher Kane, head high, expression unfathomable. He flicks through the copy Freya leaves in the lounge and pretends not to notice the photographs.

.

In early spring, Freya comes home with news that her publishing house are looking to commission a new biography of Richard Yates. She knows she should have spoken to him first but it sounded like such a great _fit_ that she put his name forward to the commissioning editor. He jibs at the loosening of yet another link in the rusting chain of control over his own destiny, making Freya call him an ungrateful wretch, but thinks nothing more of it. Two days later he gets a call. Two weeks later he's in Boston sifting through Yates's archive papers.

The book takes a year to research and six months to write. He spends long periods in the States. Sometimes he stays in Brooklyn with his dad for a few days each side of the trans-Atlantic crossings. Rufus is almost pathetically grateful for his company on these visits. The loss of two great loves, Alison and Lily (twice), has taken a toll. He always seemed younger than his years when Dan was growing up, almost more of an older brother figure than a father. Rufus seems old to him at last. He didn't know loneliness could seep into people's bones, making them brittle.

On one occasion he's staying at the loft when Serena appears; uninvited, unexpected. Husband number two is about to become ex-husband number two and so she's back in Manhattan, for now at least. She's still beautiful, lithe and buxom; but the golden sunshine that used to illuminate every room she walked into has dimmed, become a little brassy in its sheen. The skin around her mouth is tighter, more Lily-like; her child-like peals of laughter more forced. They drink beer from the bottle by the river at Brooklyn Heights, Serena waxing nostalgically about days gone by as if they were still friends, as if they might yet be lovers. She smells like bourbon; warm, sweet and heady; that quality she has that makes every lonely man think he's found his reason for living. But he's not that kind of lonely any more. When Serena rests her head on his shoulder, her intoxicating blonde cocktail only makes him feel tired. She asks him what's wrong. He has no idea where to start, so instead he shrugs and smiles; sorry, he's got nothing.

.

When he returns to London to write, the home dynamic has changed. Freya is alternately clingy and needy, or irritable and distant. Over dinner one night when she's being particularly intractable, she asks him where he thinks their relationship is going. It's so predictable a question he has to swallow down his disappointment. Instead he asks her where she would like it to go – which after all seems more to the point. She avoids a direct answer in a thoroughly British manner, playing with her food as she mentions all the friends' weddings they've been to recently and how many new baby cards she's had to buy in the last few months.

.

On a rumbling grey autumn day he submits his biography of Yates to his editor and asks Freya to marry him. Her almond eyes fill with tears as she kisses him and whispers, 'yes', and he wonders if anything will ever really happen to him again.


	2. Chapter 2

In December, something happens to him. He finishes an interview with an up-and-coming actor (physical, intense, brooding - the _new _new Brando?) and is walking across the lobby of the Dorchester hotel when he sees her.

She's standing near the reception desk, surrounded by monogrammed luggage and black-suited minders, wearing a spotless cream suit which even he can recognise as Chanel. Her hair is swept up in a chignon as it always is in photographs these days. She looks small and fragile in the cavernous art deco space, like a fine porcelain figurine out of its cabinet, but it's unmistakably her. He stops dead in his tracks, chest suddenly short of oxygen, and just stares. For the first second or two she's otherwise occupied, giving a curt instruction to one of the black-suits, then her gaze drifts and she looks directly his way.

Her dark eyes remain flat; pools of still water, betraying nothing. Her face – _that face_, he thinks – gives no indication she has registered his presence but her eyes don't turn away from his. Brief seconds pass like leaden hours before there's a bustle among the black-suits and she's being swept across the lobby followed by a heavily laden porter's trolley, stacked with suitcases and swinging with dress bags.

There's no acknowledgment as she passes by. Her eyes refocus firmly in the direction of her movement. He swivels to keep her in his sights, but she's marshalled swiftly into the elevator and disappears from view in matter of moments. Against his every hope, but in line with his every expectation, there's not even the slightest suggestion of a backward glance.

He makes it outside without being conscious of his movements. The winter days are short and the daylight already darkening into night above him. He commands the shakiness which appears to have infected his legs and lungs to cease, and, in an instinctive protective movement, turns up the collar of his coat against the chilly air. As he walks away, a lonely scout snowflake spirals sedately from the sky. Its fellows follow soon after, dusting the pavements with a thin layer of icing. His leaden footsteps leave black holes in the delicate white sheet.

.

He writes a story about a snow queen who lives alone in a land of ice. One day the greatest of the powerful northern gods, a spirit made of steel and molten liquid fire, comes across her in a forest glade and will not rest until he has captured her and made her bend the weather to his will. Under the furnace of his touch, she melts a little, water droplets dripping from her wrists and cheeks to the forest floor. But the fire god cannot control his desire to have her, to hold her, until one day he puts out his flaming hand only to grasp at nothing. Her rivulets run around his ankles as she escapes downstream, dampening the power of his destructive heat, extinguishing his smouldering cinders as she flows.

.

He sells the story to a London literary magazine and doesn't complain when Freya pulls him around estate agents' offices for the third Saturday in a row in her quest to hunt down the perfect family house. The days grow incrementally longer and Hyde Park is decorated with a sprinkling of yellow and purple crocuses. He begins to think that maybe nothing happened to him after all, but then it arrives.

The envelope is thick, cream, obviously expensive but completely plain. No printed crest or embossed monogram, just a smudged continental postmark. Inside the single sheet of card is equally unremarkable, save for the seven brief words inked across it in a careful, flowing hand.

"I always was a sucker for fairytales."

There's no signature, not even an initial, but there doesn't need to be. He doesn't know how she found out about the story or tracked down his address, but it's her. He knows it's her.

.

He writes about an old brownstone house on a New York square and the affable inconstant man who lived there long ago with his sharp-tongued wife and dark-haired daughter. The little girl, clever and intense, is constantly pushed and harried by her ambitious mother, and consequently finds it much easier to adore her genial mercurial father who, in contrast, demands so little. Every night she calls out for him at bedtime and can't sleep if he doesn't tuck her in, singing a soft low lullaby as he carelessly tousles her hair. One night she calls out and her father doesn't come. He never comes again. The little girl learns to live alone in the dark with her night terrors.

.

Freya's parents express their disappointment that their daughter will not be marrying in church. Freya expresses her disappointment in more violent language, but he refuses to budge. He'll compromise on the music, the guest list, the honeymoon destination, but on this point he remains firm. The Yates book is released to warm, if not gushing, reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Freya demonstrates a new-found satisfaction upon introducing her fiancé at the book launches they attend. He starts asking the waiting staff for whisky rather the proffered wine. Angela calls to say his latest short story has been picked up in the US this time, adding that a contact at the New Yorker emailed, interested in seeing more. According to Angela, the renaissance of Daniel Humphrey could be pebble-sized splash in the literary scene's paddling pool. He gives her non-committal replies, and waits.

.

Eventually, his patience is rewarded. A second thick cream envelope arrives on the doormat the morning he and Freya are due to fly to Venice for a romantic early summer city break. He hides it in his inside jacket pocket, unopened. It's a whole day and a half until he manages to steal an hour by himself, while Freya lies down in their hotel room, recovering from the aftermath of a long lazy lunch washed down with three-too-many bellinis. He sits on the marble steps of the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute, looking across the Grande Canale toward the intricate façade of the Doge's Palace, and reads the card that's been burning a hole in his chest since they set off for the airport. The message is longer than the last.

"I can't waste my time tracking down every pathetic little collection of pretentious sub-adolescent out-pourings ever written, so my people have had word with the fiction editor at the New Yorker. You can send the next one straight to her. I subscribe."

He laughs, blindsided. He didn't know what he expected, but he likes it that behind the stings and back-handed compliments she surprises him still. He leans back and lets the shimmering lagoon sun-kiss his eyelids. With his eyes half-closed he can pretend, just for a little while, that she's there basking with him.

.

Back in London he writes about a Venetian courtesan. Her beauty and her wit make her the most admired and lauded woman of her age. She is courted by lords and magnates, feted by their wives, painted by artists and immortalised by poets. So esteemed is she for her exquisite loveliness, her vivacity and charm, that she begins to believe herself far, far above all other people. A heavenly goddess with sensibilities too rarefied to mingle amongst ordinary earth dwellers. Even the courts of kings seem to her filled with bores and philistines, so she retreats to her magnificent palazzo where she has a room in which the glimmering reflections of the sun on the canal outside the windows bounce off mirrored glass walls, creating a dazzling salon of flattering light. She orders more looking glasses and has her servants position them around the room so that in every direction her gaze is met with no lesser sight than the stupendous vision of her own reflection. She creates a coterie of reflected selves who are never base in their movements, or coarse in their language. They never wear ugly fashions, or read books she doesn't favour. They agree with her every whim, gracefully nodding their delicate dark-eyed heads, and artfully laughing at her every quip. In time she tires of their lack of new opinions, their endless re-treading of the same old stories. She becomes impatient and cross and her sonority of selves grow petulant and angry in return. She takes to cursing them furiously for the ugliness of their frowns. In response the reflections' once-lovely visages bare their teeth, twisting their features into horrible shapes of disgust and contempt. Half-mad with rage and disappointment she flings herself at the panes of glass, smashing into them with her fists and hands until broken shards fly into the air; into her cheeks, brows and arms. Her tormenters disappear, leaving her lying alone on the sun-streamed floor of her room, bloody and bruised. Centuries later, a legend persists that her spirit still walks the alley ways of Venice at night, a hood raised to cover the scars on her disfigured face.

.

The card comes more quickly this time. "So that's ill-advised power-couple relationships, absent father issues, and Queen Bee complexes done. What's next, Humphrey?"

.

Jenny flops down into her seat at the coffee house, looking exhausted. He expresses concern and asks if her taking on a capsule collection for Liberty is proving too much. His sister retorts tartly that it's not the collection as much as her foolish offer to dress his bride-to-be and her wedding party. He winces in apology. "I'm sorry, is Freya being a nightmare?" "No, it's not that – I like Freya, you know that. It's her uber-conservative mother that's driving me nuts. Her understanding of hemlines is firmly rooted in the 1950s." He pulls a sympathetic face, and momentarily rests his eyes on the steamed up window as Jenny places her order.

"Hey," she begins unexpectedly, jolting him out of a reverie, "I meant to say, I really liked your story."

"Which one?"

"The last one, about the two sisters – the busty blonde and the brainy brunette?"

"The characterisation was a _little_ more subtle than that."

Jenny grins wickedly underneath her fringe as she lowers her head to sip her latte. "Yeah, well. Your codes aren't all that hard to crack. I can spot veiled references to a fatuous former step-sister and her bitch best friend a mile off."

The allegory had been a tad obvious, he had to admit - the cream card that had followed it had practically contained an eyeroll – however, he still stood by the execution.

"At least you're safe from reprisals," Jenny continued, "I mean, the only magazine Serena buys is _Vogue_, and as for the Princess, well… she might have a minion read the society pages of _Paris Match_ to her while fanning her with a palm leaf, I suppose, but other than that…"

He holds up a warning hand. Jenny shuts up, shooting him an incredulous look. "Really, Dan? _Still_?"

He gulps a larger than necessary mouthful of coffee and mutters, "She's not what you think."

His sister raises her eyebrows, indicating her disbelief, but leaves it there.

.

Some of the postmarks are from Monaco but most are from Paris, indicating that she spends more time away from the marital seat than in it. He takes to scouring the pages of _Hello_ for scraps of information about her life, but while he learns a great deal about her choice in handbags, he gleans very little about the Grimaldis' living arrangements. In the end, he admits defeat and calls the only person he can think of who can be trusted to help him and ask no questions.

Eric is surprised to hear his voice, they haven't really spoken since their parents' divorce, but he's still Eric – open, accepting and ready to do what he can. Within two days, Eric sends him an email with the address he asked for. Eric, sage as ever, signs off with the words, "Be careful."

While Freya is with her mother at the florist, he sits at the study desk in the Georgian town house Richard Yates inadvertently helped him buy, and dashes off a note. He can hardly explain to himself why it's so important to tell her. Why he's gone to these lengths to find the means. He has no expectation that anything at all will be changed by her reading the words. He visualises her disinterested frown as her eyes skim the page, he sees the fingers of her hand close carelessly around the paper, and imagines the crumpled remains tossed lightly into a waste paper basket, before she continues, unperturbed, with the business of her day.

He stares at the hastily written sheet in front of him, its message striking him as falling somewhere between pathetically plaintive and bathetically banal. "I'm getting married next Saturday. Dan" Before he can change his mind, he shoves the paper in an envelope, scrawls her married name and the Parisian apartment address acquired via Eric on the front, and adds "PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL" for good measure in the top left-hand corner. He deposits it in a post box on the high street and drinks a double scotch in the pub on the corner before returning home.

.

.


	3. Chapter 3

The bright September day of the wedding rolls around with neither incident nor the appearance of a cream envelope. Rufus and Alison make their separate trips from New York to stand side-by-side at the ceremony; parents temporarily united. Chuck sends his apologies and four crates of Dom Perignon.

Serena and Eric jet in from Morocco and Uganda respectively; their efforts to be there – in spite of all the messiness of their parents spilt and the lack of words exchanged in the subsequent months and years - symptomatic of the size and generosity of their Van der Woodsen hearts. Serena makes a point of seeking him out before the ceremony. She compliments the cut of his suit with affectionate jocularity, and they both laugh politely before the moment stills apprehensively in the air. Serena's smile slips slowly. Suddenly serious, her blue eyes brimming with concern, she takes both his hands in hers.

"Are you sure about this, Dan? Is this really what you want?"

Taken aback, he stutters a non-answer. Serena presses on, now resolved, "Because Eric and I, we talked and we think… we're worried… well, you don't seem all that… happy."

He must look shocked because Serena instantly tries to lighten the mood, hitching a smile back up her face as she jokes, "Just say the word and I'll make a run for it with you."

He manages to form an oxygen-less reply, "Of course, I am. Of course I'm happy. I love Freya. We're getting married. Today. In fact. We're getting married today."

At that, every trace of levity leaves Serena's face and, more solemn than he can remember her being since she was sixteen-years old at one of her mother's weddings, begging him not to leave her, she whispers, "You love her. You're just not in love with her. Because I've seen your face when you're in love. I saw it when we were kids and you looked me, and I saw it again when we were older and you…" , even now, in this moment of fierce honesty, she shys from naming the constant elephant in his every room, "_weren't… _ looking at me anymore. I know what loves looks like on Dan Humphrey, and this isn't it. You aren't me, Dan. You shouldn't be stumbling from one bad decision to another. You should get it right the first time."

He leans in and brushes his lips to her cheek with tender gratitude. She tastes of New York and old money - qualities she shares with another girl he once kissed - and of sunlight and sandalwood, qualities which are all Serena's own. He's not sure if it's the similarity or the difference which causes the deep sudden ache to open in the pit of his chest.

Serena's arms are around him and for an instant he thinks about kissing her hard, pushing her up against the wall and letting himself get lost in her amber liquor self; to drink her in and remind himself of the Dan Humphrey he used to be… before. Instead, the Dan Humphrey he is now does nothing more than pull away, smilingly reassuring his ex-girlfriend, ex-step sister, she has nothing to worry about, he's got it as right as it's possible to get. He leaves the 'ever going to be' unspoken but judging by the pursed lines of her lips and almost imperceptible shake of her head, he's pretty sure Serena still hears it.

.

At the reception that evening, Freya looks radiant in her silk-and-lace Jenny Humphrey creation. She laughs, her almond eyes emanating sheer joy, as he twirls her around the dance floor as gracefully as he knows how. He feels her happiness and is grateful that, for whatever reason, it's in his power to bestow it.

.

They honeymoon in Cuba. Freya develops a taste for daiquiris and seductively coercing him through the doorways of salsa clubs. He starts surreptitiously gathering material for a fledging Hemmingway biography. Without a cream envelope to spur him on, he feels his powers of creative fiction wane.

.

It's a week after their return when Freya decides she can live no longer with the pile of wedding presents obscuring their brand new oak dining table and asserts some order on the chaos. He's replying to an email from Angela ("When's the new story coming?" "Sorry, I've got nothing right now. Just got married, you know?"), when Freya sashays into his study, a large elaborately decorated book clutched against her hip. She drops the tome onto his desk, saying, "This seems like an odd wedding gift. I just found it underneath the Le Creuset dish from my aunt. There's no name on the note. Can you think who it might be from?"

His chest judders as he catches sight of the title, but he keeps his voice level, "How strange. You say there's a note?"

Freya drops a familiar cream card on top of the book.

"Let me know if inspiration strikes," she kisses the top of his head and leaves.

The book is a 1913 edition of _Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales_ bound in blue morocco. The message reads, "Good luck. It turns out the Disney versions are no preparation. But you knew that already."

.

He writes about a cypress tree on a Grecian hill side, in the days when the gods were not mere shadow spirits but hewed from the very elements; beings of salt sea, baked earth and verdant woods. Day after day in the shadow of the tree sits a young woman, her glossy raven head bent in study. From sunrise to sunset, sheltered from the worse of the Mediterranean sun, she applies her mind to text after text, absorbing the words and wisdom of the greatest thinkers of the known world, her will intent upon unlocking their secrets. She devours works of philosophy and politics, literature and science. Her absolute dedication to the pursuit of knowledge is noted by her family and the locals in the village and soon word spreads further, borne on fishing boats and fair breezes. Her fame reaches the ear of the goddess Athene who seeks out the cypress tree and its strange human fruit. Athene lays a choice before the woman; the goddess will grant her the gift for which she thirsts - ultimate knowledge - but if she accepts this gift, no matter how long she lives, she will never become rich in property, rich in pearls or rich in power. The woman replies that the cypress tree above is more valuable to her than her houses and farms, her necklaces of gold, or even her handmaidens, because it has kept the glare of the sun from her eyes and allowed her to begin to understand the mysteries of both mankind and mountains, eagles and air. Athene smiles and, as promised, grants the woman the gift she has chosen. Years pass by and the woman is no longer young, but she is famed and revered throughout the ancient world. Her words of wisdom prevent wars and help create wonders. She lives simply under the cypress tree without property and without pearls. But the goddess Athene lied (as goddesses are wont): The woman has great power - for no amount of knowledge comes without it - she just uses it wisely.

.

A noisy family of sparrows animate the beech hedge at the end of their garden with incessant cheery chatter, while below a straggling line of daffodils bob their heads to avoid the frequent April showers. Freya's stomach is gently swelling underneath the line of her linen smocks. He notes a new calm within her, a serenity which inspires in him a newfound tenderness. Much later, he senses these gusty spring days of anticipation are the best of his marriage. At the time, all he senses is that while his wife is waiting for one thing, he's waiting for another entirely.

.

It is months in coming, and when the cream card does finally arrive, the change of tone it conveys cracks his fragile equanimity like a stone on sheet ice. "I should have stayed in school. I should have gone to Yale. I shouldn't have let anything stop me. Keep writing. Write. Please. Write me another life."

.

He works like he's never worked at anything in his life, the words pouring onto the page in a frothing torrent. He withdraws to his study, or, when Freya's mother comes around - as she does more and more frequently - to the coffee house near Jenny's studio. His sister still joins him there now and then, but each time she sits across from him as he types, fingers of both hands linked around her coffee mug, her eyes carry a heavier weight of suspicion than before. He begins to think he'd prefer it if she stopped coming at all.

Finally things come to a head. After sitting in silence for ten minutes while he edits and re-edits - deleting whole sentences then re-typing them, only to delete them again moments later - she speaks suddenly, an unaccountable dangerous edge tingeing her words, "So, what's this one about, then?"

He pulls himself out of the troublesome sentence and looks at her blankly, having only been vaguely aware of the sound of her voice. She repeats slowly, "I _said_… what's this one about?"

"Oh. Right. It's… complicated."

"Try me." Her voice is hard.

"Okay", he begins warily. "It's about a US senator. He's kinda in the Kennedy mould? Chiselled and charming. Womanising and weak."

"So far, so Nate," she interrupts tartly.

"It's not Nate. It's a fictional character. I'm a _writer_," he explains, patronisingly. Jenny bridles for a second and then smiles a shade too sweetly and honeys her trap.

"So does this fictional senator have a powerful political dynasty behind him? One with expectations which overreach his abilities?"

"Well, sort of…"

"And how does such a man go about living up to his family's hopes and dreams?" She mock pauses before answering her own question, "Why, if only he has the perfect partner to help him, someone he's been destined for since childhood…"

He snorts and tries to launch into a defence, but Jenny presses on. "…someone ambitious and artful, super-smart and scheming, brunette and brown-eyed?"

"Jenny, it's just a story…"

"Dan!" she cuts in exasperated, "They're all just stories… but they're all stories about…"

He places his mug down on the Formica table top with more force than necessary to cut off her sentence.

"What are you trying to say?" He gestures with his hands, irritably.

"I'm saying you have a beautiful wife and a baby on the way. I'm saying…"

"You're saying I should forget about her?" he asks, incredulous.

"YES." She answers emphatically, "Yes."

.

He finishes the story and sends it to Angela, who sends it to the New Yorker. The week before it's due to be published, Freya gives birth to a healthy baby girl. With a nod to Fitzgerald, they name her Daisy. Jenny, bearing soft toys and a fruit basket, visits her new-born niece in the hospital. It's the first time brother and sister have spoken since their altercation. Jenny hugs him delightedly as he bounces his tiny daughter in his arms. Freya looks on, tired and jubilant, while the Humphrey siblings wordlessly forgive each other their sins.

Holding his child, gently touching his fingers to each of her small soft-nailed toes in turn, he's aware of an unfamiliar feeling of warmth suffusing his body which he recognises – finally – as happiness. At long last something else just happened to him.

.

On an August evening, a few weeks later, he frets and fusses ceaselessly over Daisy while trying to simultaneously pull on his suit jacket and dampen down the most unruly of his curls. Eventually Freya, exasperated and annoyed at the implication she can't look after her own child for a night, pushes him out the door and, with a cool perfunctory kiss, instructs him to go enjoy himself.

Over a Sidecar at the Savoy, Chuck proposes a toast to Dan Humphrey's new fatherhood; and although Chuck doesn't use those exact words, but rather chooses to raise his glass to "Daisy Humphrey and her dashing Uncle Charles", Dan infers the worthier meaning behind them and finds himself touched by the gesture. This feeling diminishes somewhat when Chuck moves on to regaling him with a series of epic tales of decadence and depravity, the level of which his sleep-deprived mind can barely credit, even given the source.

Halfway through the evening, indistinct through the cocktail-fuelled haze, the matinee idol-shaped face of Congressman Archibald appears in his line of vision; a veritable blast from the past, in town briefly on business. After a warm liquor-lubricated welcome, Nate genially calls Bass's bluff.

"He's covering, Dan. Don't believe a word," he advises good-humouredly. "It's all a smokescreen to hide the fact that he's back in love with his _wife_, of all people."

Chuck slowly rolls a mouthful of cognac and Cointreau, narrows his eyes, and answers with a noncommittal eyebrow before surrendering, with a passable approximation of the old Bass sleaze, there may have been a _rapprochement _in relations between a certain Laird and his Lady. The Laird in question leans back against the bar, flashing a garish inch of telling tartan sock in the process.

Dan smiles back at him; half-amused, half-envious, half-cut; and, through the seductive alcoholic fog, worries if Daisy is sleeping soundly.

.

The cream card is less opaque, more formal than usual. An explanation comes unspoken by way of the light blue box which accompanies it, harbouring a delicate child-sized necklace from which hangs a small silver pendant in the shape of a daisy.

.

.


	4. Chapter 4

He writes in the night-time, staying alert for the slightest suggestion of a grumble or a cry from his daughter's bedroom, while Freya catches up on precious sleep. His existence becomes nocturnal, shared only with the tap of his keyboard and, progressively intermittently, with his baby daughter. After a few weeks Daisy is sleeping through the night more often than not, yet he keeps to his hours of darkness. When his wife questions his habits, he insists he's just trying to be helpful. Somehow it's not long before whole weeks pass by with merely a handful of words exchanged between them, and all of them about the baby. Meanwhile, in between the long fingers of dawn twilight, a new story begins to take shape.

.

In olden days, outside the perimeter of the castle and the village which nestles at its base, lies a vast green forest. So thick are its trees and so dense its leaves that no man may map its trails nor count its wonders. The villagers say it is enchanted and that deep in its heart, at the end of paths untrammelled by human foot, magical beasts live by bright springs in secret clearings. The greatest of these is rumoured to be a pure white stag with a coat of moonlight and hooves of polished silver. There lives in the castle a knave who prizes himself as a rare poet and scholar. He listens to the talk of the village folk and vows he will seek out such a creature and, using his wit and his words, tame it for his own.

Armed with only quill, lute and parchment, he sets out into the forest. Days and nights go by. He sees tawny owls and russet foxes, striped badgers and red deer, but the ermine buck remains elusive. He wanders deeper into the forest, losing his return path among the thickets and closely-packed saplings. The knave presses on; he can go back no longer. At night, the forest whispers teasingly as he tries to sleep; playing mischief-laden tricks on his mind. Lying on a makeshift bed of bracken and dry leaves, he catches a glimmer of something bright and gleaming in the near distance. The knave rises and creeps towards the source of the light, his heart aflutter, only to discover a small gap in the trees where the crescent of the moon reflects upon a shallow pool.

Weeks and months go by, he sees ghostly barn owls and grey-backed wolves, learns the song of the nightingale and the squeal of the vole. The knave becomes accepted by the creatures of the forest, among them but not of them. Eventually, a year after he set out from the castle, the knave is walking along a rabbit track when the trees around him begin to thin and he stumbles out into a lush, sunlit glade. A crystal spring burbles brightly from a rocky crag at the edge of the clearing and the knave realises he has discovered the forest's legendary heart at last. He runs towards the stream and scoops its icy water to his mouth. It tastes as sweet as nectar. It is then, from the corner of his eye that the knave spots a flash of moonlight white, edged with shining silver. The white hart stands atop the crags above him, awesome in its imperial majesty; with its rippling satin coat, stately curved antlers, and deep dark liquid eyes. The villagers were right; the great beast has magic, and, far from being tamed, it casts its spell upon the knave.

.

He types the last sentence and is about to close his laptop with a sigh when an email alert catches his eye. The message is from Angela, informing him that his short stories have come to the attention of an editor at Bloomsbury who wants to know if Dan Humphrey would be interested in publishing them as a collection?

Until this moment he has pretended to himself - and almost everyone else - that the stories have been unrelated individual ideas with no common thread. The very suggestion of bringing them together as one volume is tempting enough, feels right enough, to allow him admit to himself that the stories belong together. Just as they belong to him. Just as they belong to her.

His email in response is immediate and succinct.

"My answer is yes. But can we hold back on confirming for a while? There's someone I need to contact first."

.

Another grey autumn rumbles into winter. When Freya drops by her studio one damp January afternoon, Jenny is initially taken aback. She likes her sister-in-law well enough but they've never been close. Jenny's bohemian fashion crowd and Freya's publishing one run in vastly different circles. Regardless, Jenny welcomes her visitor warmly and sets about making them both coffee. Meanwhile, Freya sinks onto the sofa, making small talk about how much she loves her time with Daisy, but how great it is being back at work, having adult conversations once again.

Jenny nods and smiles in the right places, waiting, with a sense of foreboding, for the other shoe to drop. It doesn't take long. A long pregnant pause soon settles over the already stilted conversation. Freya makes a sudden energetic movement and begins rummaging in her bag. She turns back to Jenny, hands full of magazines which she then drops onto the coffee table. Jenny recognises the covers of familiar New Yorker issues and a handful of other literary-looking publications; the ones containing Dan's stories. Jenny tenses, suddenly anticipating where this is heading.

Freya breaks the silence, speaking in a strange strained voice, "You know the silver necklace someone bought for Daisy when she was born?"

"The Tiffany one, with the flower?" Jenny nods, puzzled.

"Dan told me it was a present from Serena, so I sent her a thank you card. It seemed so thoughtful of her, such a lovely gesture. But when we were in New York at Christmas, at that party of Chuck's, she told me the necklace wasn't from her. That she sent the rocking horse, but nothing else."

"I guess Dan must have been mistaken," Jenny replies, carefully, "Daisy got so many presents, it must have been hard to keep track. Did you ask him about it?"

"Yes, of course I did," Freya's voice begins to tremble, "He apologised, said he really thought it had been from Serena, but maybe the tags had got mixed up."

"Well, then. Freya, I don't understand…"

"When I asked him, he got that look. It's the same look he wears when I walk into his study when he's writing one of his stupid stories. Like he's been caught out. Like I've found him with his hand in someone else's wallet."

Jenny plumps disingenuously for an expression of wide-eyed incomprehension.

"Who is she, Jenny?" Freya whispers, and Jenny's blood runs cold. "The girl in the stories. In every single one of these ridiculous fucking stories," she gestures wildly at the magazines, "Who is she?"

"She's no-one…"Jenny answers too quickly, corrects herself and starts again. "There's no-one. They're just stories, Freya."

"Don't you lie to me too. I can't bear it. Sometimes I thought I was going mad – being jealous of some dark-eyed figment of his imagination, but since the pendant I know I'm not imagining it. She's real. She's out there somewhere. And he's in love with her in a way he's never been in love with me."

Jenny feels tears prickling the back of her eyes, hot and sharp. At a loss at what to say that isn't a hollow platitude or an outright lie, she opts instead for what she believes, at any rate, to be the truth. "Freya, I don't know about the pendant or anything else, but I do know that the woman in the stories doesn't exist. Not outside of Dan's head. She's fiction, nothing more. He's a _writer_," she finishes, echoing his own words with more conviction than she feels.

.

His sister is furious. Sat across from her at the oak table in the kitchen of the Richard Yates house, he can feel the air molecules between them vibrating with her barely repressed anger. In an attempt to diffuse her righteous ire he pointedly draws attention to her niece, gurgling innocently in her bouncer beside him. It isn't working as well as he hoped.

"I can't believe you would put me in that position," Jenny hisses savagely in a low voice. "This isn't my mess, Dan. It's not _my_ marriage. She's not _my_ wife!"

He puts a finger to his lips and glances meaningfully at Daisy. "It's a misunderstanding, Jen. That's all. Freya's got herself worked up about nothing and I'll put it right. She should never have come to you, I know, and I'm sorry. What more can I say?"

Jenny's eyes flash dangerously, and the tone of her vicious whisper leaps an octave. "A _misunderstanding_? Really, Dan? What exactly is Freya _mis_understanding? That you're obsessed with a woman who _didn't want you_? Didn't even _like_ you all that much? That your made-up, entirely fictional version of her consumes you? That you're sleepwalking your way through your _actual_ life in favour of being with her in your frickin' fairytales? Is that what you call a _misunderstanding_? Because if it is, we're having one huge misunderstanding right now."

"It's not…" he stutters, "I'm not…"

Jenny energetically slumps back in her chair with an exasperated exhalation. "Good grief, Dan. What do you think is going to happen? What is it that you're waiting for? Do you honestly think she's ever thought about _you_ for a single second, in between opening hospitals and hosting garden parties? You need to start living. Right here and now, with your wife and daughter. Because it's all you have – and because it's _real_."

His reply is interrupted by the sound of mail dropping through the letterbox. He tersely excuses himself and goes to the door, stooping to retrieve the small pile of envelopes from the mat. He absently sorts through them as he walks back to the kitchen with deliberate slowness, using the time to swallow down his bubbling anger, before his eyes alight upon a sight that stops him dead in his tracks.

Five minutes later he re-enters the kitchen to find Jenny with her coat in her hand, ready to leave. Instinctively, he glances briefly in Daisy's direction to find the little girl dozing peacefully, tiny bubbles emanating from her mouth. Fatherly impulses reassured, he turns, and skewering his sister with a meaningful gaze, holds up a large thick cream envelope.

His voice is husky as utters three simple words, "She's real too."

.

Jenny's been gone an hour, Daisy is sleeping in her cot, and he's on his second scotch before he opens the envelope and examines its contents. There's a single thick cream card as usual, but this time it's accompanied by a sheaf of strangely familiar looking paper, loosely bound and closely typed. His binding. His typing.

He thinks back, trying to figure out when she must haven stolen it from the loft. Perhaps as early as the week he wrote it, perhaps as late as when she returned from her first summer in Monaco, promised to be married and carrying a child.

He barely needs to read the pages; every word resonates clearly in his memory. It's a piece he wrote that gilded spring; after a one-time-only movie turned into an eight-time-and-then-some occurrence; after an experimental life-changing kiss that-meant-nothing, but before a goddamn real-life Prince appeared clutching a slipper.

The gracefully inked words on the cream card are simple, but so unexpected and powerful, they knock the air from his lungs like a blow to the solar plexus.

"Book is fine, but seven lives are not enough. It needs one more. This one is my favourite. This one I actually got to live."

His throat aches with a hollow echoing hurt for futures lost and pasts long gone. He glances again at the opening paragraph of the transcript; a small sad smile playing ruefully around his mouth as he recognises the naivety and hopeful arrogance of his nineteen year-old self.

.

"It was all her fault. Everything was always her fault. With an imperious toss of her dark head, a quirk of her curved lips and – typically – no warning, she demanded a perfect day. Sighed that the one thing she'd never had in her short, over-privileged life (those may have been his words, not hers) was one completely perfect day. So he did what any self-respecting Brooklyn boy could do with a self-absorbed Upper East Side queen. He took her to Coney Island."

.

.

**Continued…**


	5. Chapter 5

**_Coney Island Baby_ cont./**

Like everything else about this girl, it was anything but easy. He refused to tell her their destination beforehand, on the basis that divulging such information would meet with a point blank refusal and probably an anti-Borough diatribe of greater than usual force. To his chagrin, the deployment of this tactic backfired – with hindsight, somewhat predictably - igniting instead a controlled explosion of sartorial anxiety in the face of insufficient intelligence.

In the end, she opted for pared-down classics. He met her on the street outside his building to find her in a belted mac which she wore over a striped Breton top and a navy box-pleated skirt reminiscent of her old Constance uniform. On her feet was a pair of simple flat ballet pumps, contrasting with the ferociously expensive Hermes bag on her arm. Her hair fell loose on her shoulders, last night's party curls still lingering lightly at the ends. She looked a little bit Hepburn (Audrey), a little bit Seberg (Jean) and more herself than she usually allowed.

He smiled his appreciation and was rewarded by her customary expression of wary challenge slowly softening into a small smile of her own.

"Okay, let's get this over with," she said, her voice feigning indifference. She turned away, making in the direction of her town car. He reached out an arm to stop her, shaking his head. He tried hard to push down the smirk he felt forming on his face. He was pretty sure he failed.

He breathed in through his teeth in apprehension, then exhaled nervously, "Yeah. We won't be needing that."

.

Instead, they took the F train. Her look of abject horror lasted the whole journey, interrupted only by a stream of withering witticisms at the expense of the clothes, odours and presumed income levels of their fellow passengers falling in excruciatingly penetrating whispers from her lips. As people passed by them to exit the carriage, he apologised, explaining, "She's from the Upper East Side. She has limited social skills and literally no manners."

He returned her dagger-eyed glare with one of his own and received a well-aimed kick to the ankle for his trouble.

.

When they arrived, she stood on the corner of Sitwell and Surf and fixed him with an accusing stare. "I asked for a perfect day and this is where you bring me?"

She looked suddenly small and oddly vulnerable, framed against the wide panorama of the ocean behind her. He wondered then if this had been a good idea after all, if perhaps he didn't know her as well as he thought he did.

He beseeched her patiently give it a chance, to reserve her judgment. Explained he had quite the itinerary planned. Waxed lyrically about the days when he and his sister were kids and they would run away from home and come here, because back then it seemed like a magic kingdom; the beach and the rides and the hot dogs.

Moods flitted across her face, annoyance transforming to scepticism, before her features settled into a mask of mute resignation and she allowed herself to be dragged across the road towards the garish yellow and white hoardings of Nathan's, proclaiming the birthplace of one of America's greatest contributions to cuisine.

.

There was a hot dog-related incident involving mustard and the lapel of the mac, which, he discovered pretty quickly, was not only Burberry but brand new. She punished his lack of appreciation of the level of disaster this represented on a global scale with a couple of finely honed barbs about his general appearance and intelligence, making him grin in spite of himself. This, in turn, only encouraged her further, to the point where her insults became so wildly offensive they appalled her as much as him, and they both found themselves laughing helplessly with disbelief.

He rolled his eyes heavenwards and tried to tell her she was unbelievable but something went wrong and the word came out as 'incredible'.

She blinked, momentarily taken aback. He used the second to distract her by pointing her in the direction of the brightly coloured confusion of bizarre structures that formed the amusements of Luna Park. She shook her head firmly in objection. He merely shrugged and began walking, counting slowly to ten under his breath. She let him get as far as eight before she followed.

.

They ended up riding the Cyclone five times; the first one at his persuasion, the last three at her insistence. Finally, they tumbled away, giddy and sick with adrenaline and laughter. She sank to the ground, weak legs giving way, gasping and giggling.

He watched her, amused. If he had known something as simple as a rollercoaster ride would be this effective in disarming her defences, he would have brought her here months ago. Maybe years. Every trace of her earlier truculence had vanished. He couldn't remember ever seeing her laugh so freely before, with such unconscious delight. A fluttering feeling, something like trepidation edged with sweetness, hovered over him; the sensation of a fly finding itself trapped in honey.

Gently, he handed back the Hermes bag, which had somehow found its way into his possession after the second time round the track, and took the opportunity to shake off the unsettling sensation by goading her, "I had no idea you knew language like that. That was quite an eye-opener. You never told me you were taking Anglo-Saxon at Columbia."

She just groaned in reply and begged him to stop before her hot dog made a reappearance. He took pity, imposing a temporary ceasefire. After a few moments, she recovered and, extending her hand, wordlessly asked him for assistance in pulling her to her feet. At her touch, his mouth felt strangely parched and dry; his tongue thick and words suddenly difficult to form.

Luckily, she saved him the effort. In a sardonic tone, she asked, "So, what cruel and unusual torture do you have planned next?"

.

Next, they fell somehow into a debate on the relative merits of Rothko and Pollock while waiting for a turn on the antique bumper cars; she contending that the compartmentalisation of the former was by far the more sophisticated method of communicating the intensity of human emotions, he advocating the chaos and violent energy of the latter. The battle for the upper hand continued once in the cars, with Team Rothko using the opportunity to make her point with literal forcefulness, not only against him, but also – and mainly accidentally - against a number of other unlucky drivers. Just at the point at which an ensuing conflict with the mother of one of the younger drivers displayed the potential to escalate into something unpleasant, he managed to lure her away towards the Wonder Wheel.

.

Even though Coney Island was brashier and trashier than he remembered, its sheer unapologetic lack of taste still didn't quite diminish the underlying sense of fun which had exercised such a magnetic pull on his childhood self. Enough remained that, as the hours passed, she seemed to feel it too. She promenaded down the boardwalk, third soft scoop ice cream of the day in hand, with an easy vivacity to her steps. They walked side by side, their talk turning from art to books. She hated the novel she was reading, branding it overly introspective and entirely paceless.

"I know I'm going to get to the end and absolutely nothing will have happened to anyone in the entire book. What's the point? It's just six hours of my life I'll never get back."

"But's that your problem. You're always in such a hurry to get to a tangible result, to force a narrative towards a definitive ending, aren't you worried you're failing to appreciate the thousand little moments, the tiny details that give the story its real meaning? Sometimes it's not about getting to the chess pieces to check mate; it's about how they got there."

"But isn't that _your _problem? You're so caught up in analysing the every word, reading meaning into the every exchange, that you lose sight of the bigger picture? If characters never take action, if it's all just navel gazing, then everything stultifies, nothing moves or develops; it just stands still."

"I don't think that's true." He attempted to launch a defence. "I think just as much happens in Henry James novel than in a Hemmingway, it just happens in a different way."

She exhaled loudly in derision, "Oh, I just _knew_ you'd be a Jamesian fan boy. The eternal observer, watching society's upper echelons' every move from the edges of drawing rooms as they do nothing, slowly."

"If you mean 'the perceptive social commentator, always on the outside of the action, but imposing shape and meaning on the behaviours of others', then, yes, guilty as charged."

She stopped walking, instead hoisting herself to perch on the top rung of the boardwalk rail. "Is that still how you see yourself?"

"I thought we were talking about Henry James," he quipped in deflection. She raised her eyebrows, unimpressed.

"Okay, I admit I see certain parallels. Sometimes I read his stories and then look around and think that the lives of the American elite he describes haven't changed all that much in over a century. Your world is still ruled by social expectations and denied desires, by money and marriage."

"Now it's your world too," she reminded him, sharply.

He had nothing to say to that, she was right. The difference between them was while she'd been born into that sphere, he'd consciously chosen it. He wondered when it was that the girl in front of him had started to be one of the reasons. Happily oblivious, she tossed her dark hair from her face and took a final satisfied bite of ice cream. Framed against the weak spring sunshine reflecting off the distant ocean, the salt-breeze ruffling her hair and her dark eyes sparkling with the energy of intellectual debate, he was struck uncomfortably - not for the first time - with the luminosity of her beauty; a twenty-first century Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Being with her was similar to the sensation of standing in front of a tumultuous Turner landscape or letting the sound of a world-class symphony orchestra permeate your being. In her presence he felt more intensely; his thoughts were sharper; and every cell of his body seemed to vibrate with the simple joy of being alive, alive, alive.

"Come on, Isabel Archer," he joked, "The bad news is our sampling of the delights of Coney Island is nearly over." He ignored her melodramatic sighs of relief, and ploughed on, "The good news is that there's one item still left on the Itinerary of Fun."

This won him only a dismissive snort and an eye-roll, "What makes you think I'm enjoying any of this?"

"Well, you've insulted a large portion of the population of Brooklyn, criticised my shirt and hair on five separate occasions, given Donnie at the hot dog stand a complex about his name, nearly thrown up due to excess laughter, made a small boy in a bumper car cry, eaten your own body weight in pistachio ice cream, argued with me about abstract expressionism and scared a sideshow clown, so yeah, I think by your standards, you're having a pretty good time."

She hid a satisfied smile which belied her words, "You make me sound horrible."

"You're not horrible. You're…" Appropriate adjectives kaleidoscoped furiously through his mind: Infuriating. Argumentative. Tactless. Elitist. Narcissistic. Hilarious. Intelligent. Stimulating. Exhilarating. Captivating. Dangerous.

"… you." he opted for lamely.

"So eloquent," she mocked. "What is that you want to be again? Oh, yes. A _writer_."

He answered by pulling her shoes off her feet.

"What are you doing?!"

"Last activity," he turned around, dropped his shoulders and indicated towards his back with a jerk of his head. "Get on."

"I do not do piggyback."

"And yet I have your shoes, so…"

"I hate you," she returned, giving in and slipping her arms around his shoulders.

"I know." He hoisted her body weight upwards, eliciting a yelp and the tightening of her grip around his neck, and set off towards the ocean.

.

Following the unwritten rule governing every male who finds himself in the company of a female in proximity to water, he pretended to throw her into the waves bringing a new urgency to her shrieks and scolds. Because she was her, the scolding continued long after he had put her down gently, and because he was him, he found it difficult to apologise with a straight enough face to warrant her forgiveness.

They paddled barefoot in the icy breakers.

She couldn't resist a few choice observations on the unsanitariness of sharing bathing water with people from the Boroughs, and he had to point out that they were on the same coastline here as in the Hamptons and that the same ocean washed all Long Island's beaches, but these exchanges were only half-hearted echoes of their habitual bickering. In the spring sun, with the sand beneath their soles and the cold Atlantic lapping at their ankles, an insidious serenity settled over them.

.

Later on, they sat side by side, higher up the beach where the sand was untouched by the sea's encroaching fingers, looking out at the waves while the gentle sun rays and the salt breeze dried the water from their limbs.

Stealing a sideways glance, he saw her; eyes closed, head back, face tilted towards the light, a beatific smile on her lips. Basking, relaxed and at peace. A warm tender sensation suffused his body, turning his insides liquid as if he were butter being gently heated.

She half-opened one eye, catching him looking.

"What?" she muttered, sleepily.

"I was just feeling bad about the horrible time you're clearly having."

"I'm making the best of it, Humphrey. I'm very much a 'if life throws you lemons, make lemonade' kinda girl."

He choked back laughter at the sheer scale of this untruth. She threw him a fleeting look of contempt from her varied collection and returned to her sun-bathing.

"And while we're here, I feel I should set the record straight. I love Mark Rothko too. His later works are magnificent, so concentrated and full of power."

She turned towards him then, resting her weight on one arm, and fixing him with indignant eyes, "So why did you spend twenty minutes today trying to convince me that compared to Jackson Pollack, he was just a decorator with a colour chart and a paint roller?"

"It's what we do, isn't it?"

Unexpectedly, she gifted him with a rare slow smile, her dark eyes soft and glowing. A private smile, just here, just for him. Their eyes met, and later he wondered if it was just his ardent willing that made it seem so, but the moment lingered on the air between them a little longer than it should.

Her next utterance was a non sequitor, taking him entirely by surprise.

"Did you ever bring Serena here?"

"No," he replied, a little stunned.

"Why not? Why not bring your 'dream girl' to your 'magic kingdom'?"

"It never occurred to me."

"But it occurred to you to bring me?"

He nodded honestly, trying to decipher both text and subtext.

"Huh," was her only reply, as she fixed her gaze on the breakers, a small shadow of a frown furrowing her brows.

.

On the train ride back, she rested her head on his shoulder, stifling yawns and saying sea air always made her tired. He rounded off her day of Coney Island experiences by sharing the earphones of his iPod and playing her the Lou Reed song as the train rumbled through Brooklyn. It was corny as hell, he knew, but somehow she didn't tease him for it the way he thought she would. Instead she turned her face a little further into the collar of his coat, her dark lashes skimming her cheek and the merest ghost of a smile playing around her mouth.

_The glory of love might see you through._

.

It was more than he dared to hope right then and, like everything about this girl, it wouldn't be easy. But it was okay. He was patient. And he had time.

**End./**


	6. Chapter 6

"Simply put, it reads like juvenilia."

Outside the window a sharp, spring sunlight is bouncing off the sap-green buds of the trees in the square outside the publisher's elegant town house office building. Across the desk his editor, Angus, is in the midst of doing the hardest part of his job – telling a writer the unvarnished truth, "The tone doesn't fit with the other stories; it has none of the lyricism and maturity. To include it in the collection would be doing you a disservice. You're better than this."

Angus directs a question to the other person in the room, canvassing for support, "What do you think?"

Angela fixes the editor with her steely gaze; a look legendary in London's publishing circles. "I think you're absolutely right, "she says, "It's naïve, it's simplistic and it reads like it was written by a teenager on the brink on something bigger."

In the seat next to her, his shoulders sink despondently into the upholstery. He's hardly surprised, Angela's a first-class agent and she didn't get that way without knowing quality when she sees it – and when she doesn't - but a small part of him hoped her loyalty might have persuaded her to back him regardless.

Angus is settling back in his chair too, sensing a comfortable victory. Angela continues, "I agree with your assessment entirely, but I think that's exactly why it should be included."

He starts, surprised, and behind the desk so does Angus.

"The book is a collection of modern day fairytales. Everyone starts out as a child believing fairytales have happy endings, until something happens, usually one tiny, mundane, unremarkable thing – an unreturned phone call, a casual betrayal – and you realise that the greatest fairytales, the ones worth retelling, don't close on a star-spangled kiss. The wolf still eats grandma, the little match girl dies, and the Emperor's clothes don't exist. What Dan's giving you with this last story is incredibly personal and revealing and brave. It's the writer's own last golden gasp before the cold dawn. It's the moment before the insignificant little human tragedy - the like of which happens everywhere, every day, to all of us - which hangs over and colours all the other 'deeper', 'better-written', 'more poetic' stories. And that's why you should publish it."

He could kiss her. Angela, fearsome middle-aged Angela, with her bright henna-ed hair, over-sized bangles, spidery mascara and overly-applied lipstick. He gazes at her admiringly with new eyes.

Angela returns his look with a pointed one of her own and an 'I've done my bit, now it's your turn' prompt of her head.

"Look," he admits, "I realise it may not seem like it reads well alongside the rest, but it's where it all started. It's really important to me that it's in there. Maybe it could be an epilogue, so it doesn't interrupt the tone?"

That feels apt somehow; the beginning that was also the end.

Sensing defeat, Angus leafs through the pages of the dog-eared manuscript again, with a display of disheartened resignation. "I'll have to talk to some people here," he sighs. "You really don't have an electronic copy?"

Dan shakes his head mutely.

"I'll have to get an assistant to type it up," says Angus in a tone of voice which suggests he'd prefer to ask an assistant to take him out back and shoot him in the head.

Angela flashes him a sly sideways look of triumph.

Angus's attention is caught momentarily by something on the final page. He turns the manuscript and lays it on the desk for the others to see. "Not quite the editorial comment I would have made," he says lightly, tapping the page with an index finger and failing to disguise the taint of sarcasm as fully as he hoped, "but we'll see what we can do."

Angela peers forward to look at the place Angus indicates. Written in pencil underneath the final paragraph in a clear flowing hand, like a teacher on a school exercise book, are the words, "Not perfect, but close."

His agent skewers him with a questioning look. He shrugs and smiles; sorry, he's got nothing.

.

Later, on the street outside, he thanks Angela for her help in convincing Angus to reconsider.

"I don't quite know why you did, we both know the writing's not up to the same standard…"

"Daniel," she cuts him off, her briskness belying an unanticipated vulnerability beneath her words, "You may not believe it at twenty-six, but you're not the only person in the world to have loved and lost." She gives him a kind smile, "Read Shakespeare."

.

That summer Daisy has her first birthday and celebrates the occasion by throwing up over her maternal grandmother; an act he secretly congratulates her for later when alone. Freya's work takes up more and more of her time and, although he has told her repeatedly that there will be no new fairytales - that he's moving on, there's a distance between them he seems unable to breach.

He keeps busy. In between caring for Daisy, making Angus's requested revisions to the stories, and trying and failing to come up with a suitable title for the collection, he begins to work seriously on the Hemmingway biography he's been thinking about since Cuba.

No cream cards arrive to interrupt his equanimity. He tells himself he's glad for this. The return of the stolen Coney Island story has answered the question that had haunted him for years. He didn't need to wonder any more if things might have been different if he'd have found the courage back then to tell her. His written words had spoken for him. She had known how he felt; she had always known. And she had still made the same choices. It had all been for nothing. All his love, his darkly nurtured devotion, across the years and the miles and the marriages, signified nothing.

The stag had looked into the heart of the knave and found him to be unworthy.

.

On the date of their second wedding anniversary, Freya calls mid-afternoon to say she's sorry but she has to work late and hopes he doesn't mind. He tells her its fine, mentally moving back the timings for the surprise meal he's planning to cook.

He guesses she'll be home by ten at the latest, so at eight he lays the table, puts the wine on ice to chill and starts preparing the sauce for the steak.

By ten past midnight, when Freya turns her key in the lock, the sauce is cold, the candles burned and the wine mostly drunk. She walks through the rooms of their house, surveying the remains of the half-cooked dinner in the kitchen and the empty plates arranged on the dining table, a lump forming in her throat. She finds her husband curled up in an armchair in his study, dozing; a glass of wine slipping from his hand and that stupid old book of Scandinavian fairy tales on his knee.

She gently shakes him awake.

"You're home," he states the obvious, sleepily.

"I'm sorry I'm late."

"It doesn't matter."

She can feel herself starting to cry and fights to hold back the tears.

"I made dinner," he says, almost hopefully.

"I saw. I'm sorry," she says again, the tears threatening to fall now.

Now almost fully awake, he becomes aware of a disquieting tension in Freya's movements and a tremble in her voice.

"Hey, what's wrong? Did something happen?" He puts down the glass and moves aside the book.

"No. Yes. I don't know."

"You're not making a lot of sense, but whatever it is, just tell me."

The tears are coming hot and fast now, spilling from her almond eyes and coursing down her cheeks. Exhorting the heavens, she appears to ask the gods, "Why now?"

He sits forward in the half-light of the study, uncomprehending.

Freya turns to him and repeats her question, "Why now? Why after all this time do you choose now to start investing in our relationship? Why now, when it's precisely too late? Do you know how many times I've wished you'd do something, _anything_, to show it was _me _you cared about? When we first got together, I almost _liked_ the fact that I wasn't as important to you as your writing, I thought it meant you were a real artist," she laughs hollowly, "but then I found out it wasn't _writing_ you were obsessed with. It was someone else, someone from a time in your life I knew nothing about and couldn't touch, and that however much I loved you, it was never going to be enough to repair the damage she'd done to your heart."

She took a breath, her chest heaving.

"And what's worse is that you knew it! You knew you were damaged goods and you let me try to love you all the same! But that's not even the part I can't forgive you for! The thing I'll never forgive is that everyone else knew it too. Everyone else knew I would never be 'the one' for you: Your sister, your father, Serena and Chuck and all your other superficial high-society New York friends with too much money and not an ounce of class between them. All the pitying glances, the faux-reassuring smiles, the outright lies! 'Dan loves you very much.' 'You make him so happy, Freya.' 'He's lucky to have met you.' Well, you know what? You _were_ lucky. You were damned lucky."

She wipes the saltwater from her cheeks and attempts to regain her composure.

"I appreciate that you've been trying lately. I do. But a half-hearted anniversary dinner isn't going to fix what's wrong with us now. It's too late. I don't want to be someone's runner-up prize anymore. I deserve better than that."

Now it's here, there's such a crushing inevitability about this moment, its coming is almost a relief. He stands. For a long time they face each other across the battleground of the study carpet. He only becomes aware he's crying too when a stray tear zig-zags over his jaw, leaving a cold damp trail. Freya's face is a dictionary of hurt, blown-out anger and exhaustion. He feels sick with self-hatred; he who had it in his power to make this woman happy, instead brought her this. He was broken, and instead of trying to help her fix him, he broke her too. Appalled at his own blind selfishness, he calls armistice first, closing the space between them. He tentatively puts his arms around her. She tenses, but allows the gesture. It's pathetic and meaningless and woefully inadequate but there's nothing else left to say, so he says it anyway.

"I'm sorry," he whispers hoarsely, into her honey blonde hair, "I'm so sorry."

.

The envelope containing the divorce papers, when delivered to him at Jenny's Dalston apartment, is thin and white. Rufus visits to lend moral support and for two strange weeks it's like the last ten years never happened, the three Humphreys living together again in a hipster-style loft. Chuck sends his commiserations and four cases of Dom Perignon.

Exiting the Tube at King's Cross to begin another day of research at the British Library, he finds himself instinctively turning up his collar against the icy chill of another rumbling grey London autumn.


	7. Chapter 7

He gets used to nothing happening to him again. Slips into the familiar numbness as easily as a pair of worn slippers. Only it's not quite like before because now there's Daisy, and when she holds out a proudly crayoned scribble for his appraisal, or staggers her first few steps swaying like a tiny drunkard, a shaft of golden sunlight breaks through the rumbling grey clouds to strike his chest, creating a small warm pool in the tepid waters of his heart.

On the floor of Jenny's apartment academic papers on the editing of _A Moveable Feast_ and photographs of Parisian cafes in the 1920s jostle for space with swatches of material and discarded fashion sketches. In the evenings the Humphreys work at separate ends of the dining table. Jenny punctuates her periods of frenzied activity with paper-crumpling moments of critical reflection and language to make a sailor blush. He sifts systematically through research materials, one hand cradling a wine glass from which he sips thirstily, as if the red liquid it contains were squeezed from the Muses rather than grapes. Writing has never been this hard before. He finds himself stretching for every sentence.

.

In the afternoons he picks up Daisy from nursery. If the weather is fine, they feed the ducks in the park. If it's cold and wet they go to the bookshop and choose a picture book to read together. Daisy usually gets to pick, but he has one unbreakable rule – no fairytales.

Three nights a week Daisy sleeps over at the loft, sharing the cramped space of what used to be Aunt Jenny's spare room with her father. The rest of the week she lives with her mother in the Richard Yates house and slumbers beneath the chain of tiny white-petalled flowers he once spent two days painting around her bedroom in a frieze.

Christmas passes by with all the attendant awkwardness and guilt the season gifts to recently separated parents, but they get through, knowing next year will be easier and the year after that even more so. Then he feels guilty about that too. On New Year's Eve Jenny wangles him an invitation to a party thrown by one of her fashion designer friends. He finds himself ringing in the New Year with a bout of hasty stairwell sex with a Brazilian model called Luciana (or was it Lucrezia?). In the fumbling haze of inebriation they exchange numbers. Neither will ever call.

Next day, the veins in his head throbbing against the inside of his skull, his voice loaded with self-disgust, he tells his reflection in the bathroom mirror that even Chuck doesn't act like Chuck any more. Isn't it time he got a grip? In the kitchen, over the top of her glass of juice, his sister's eyes tell him; it's way past time.

.

The celebrity gossip magazines enjoy a joyous leap into the New Year, courtesy of paparazzi photos of the Prince of Monaco in the back of limo embracing a tanned brunette who is definitely not his wife. Their delight is matched only by the relish with which they print double page spreads of a slight immaculately-clad figure carrying out her schedule of official duties regardless, her chin high, her expression inscrutable. They caption the pictures with adjectives such as "brave", "betrayed", "withdrawn". He flicks through copies in newsagents and leaves with copies of _The Guardian_ instead. Jenny occasionally brings one home from work and throws it to him with an ironic laugh.

"Shows how much these worthless rags know about the delicate Princess. She looks just fine to me."

He pretends not to hear, not to look, but on some level he feels an odd sense of pride. Because Jenny's right: If they think something like that would break her, they have no idea at all who she is or what she's capable of. Her face in the photographs is inscrutable. Unless you know her. And then, if you know her, if you really know her - if you had spent long Brooklyn nights tracing the lines of her face with your eyes as she slept on your family's battered couch, you might – just might – catch the slightest glimmer of a smirk flicker at the edge of her lips.

The snowdrops are pushing their delicate bell heads through the frost across London's parks when Daisy flourishes another of her stick figure drawings for his approbation and describes the three sub-Picasso subjects as "Me, Mummy, and Mummy's friend Mark."

He takes a two-week research trip to Key Largo.

.

He returns in mid-February. The same time as Mummy's friend Mark – who turns out to be an editor at Freya's publishing house - moves into the Richard Yates house.

The tabloids carry pictures of a beaming royal couple at a state dinner in Monte Carlo under banner headlines proclaiming reconciliation. Two days later they carry pictures of a petite dark-haired figure, her face obscured by even darker sunglasses, boarding a private jet to Paris alone.

At London Fashion Week in February, Jenny Humphreys' new collection is hailed by Italian Vogue as the breath of Anglo-American air couture has been waiting for. The other high fashion magazines follow suit, extolling the marriage of New York new-wave energy and sharp British mod tailoring as eminently wearable but - much more importantly - utterly desirable.

Charles and Lady Arabella Bass host a glittering party in Jenny's honour in the art-deco surroundings of Eltham Palace. Jenny is courted by representatives than no less than three major European fashion houses, but seems more interested in teasing a laughingly reluctant Congressman Nathaniel Archibald on to the dance floor. He observes his sister from the vantage point of a laconic pose against the bar; wryly noting he may not be the only Humphrey after all with unfinished business on the Upper East Side. He enjoys the evening, but is careful to make sure he leaves vaguely sober and very much alone.

.

He's on a flight to Miami en route back to Key West when the news breaks. Meaning, typically, he's among the last to know. Everything feels the same as ever as he strides across the glossy airport concourse. The faces of his fellow travellers look perfectly normal, a few travel weary furrows on brows, but that's all. There's no hint to warn him that while he was in the air, the earth crumbled into the sea: So, casually, absently, he switches on his phone…

An instant bombard of beeps cause him to fumble; to drop the handle of his suitcase. (Later, that's the sensation he remembers more clearly than any other; the hard plastic slipping from his grasp; the echoing dull thud as the case hits the floor; the brief sidelong glances from blank-faced passers-by.)

A message.

A voice.

Jenny.

"Have you heard? Dan, where are you? Have the heard the news?"

A catch in her throat.

An urgency.

"Listen, something's happened. Call me when you get this."

Then two small words, just two tiny simple words, hitting with the devastating force of a landslide.

"It's Blair."

.

Dry-throated, numb-limbed, he sits in the airport watching the news flashes scrolling across the television screens in the concourse. His phone rings at regular intervals. He doesn't answer. After two hours he switches it off. After ten, he boards a flight back to London.

.

On the television in Jenny's loft the news cycle continues to unravel. He watches in compelled silence, without food, without sleep.

The same images repeat endlessly, burning themselves onto the inside of his eyelids. Eyes open or closed, they are the only things he sees.

A white yacht.

A turquoise Aegean sea.

A marina; forest of masts gently bobbing.

A dark crowded dock, illuminated with blue flashes.

A black-draped shapeless shape sliding through ambulance doors.

.

Jenny's figure hovers in his peripheral vision, anxiously watching his ceaseless vigil; her sleeves pulled over her hands, her young face grave.

.

At first, new details emerge thick and fast: A private sailing holiday. A party. Champagne flowing like a sparkling spring. Her early retirement, complaining of a headache. The morning discovery of her empty suite, her unslept in bed. Authorities alerted. Coastguard boats launched. Search and rescue helicopters scrambled. A lady-in-waiting testifies to her habitual night swims. She found them calming. Said they gave her a sense of peace.

Just in case viewers can't picture a dark blue swimsuit, at regular intervals the news channels helpfully flash up photographs of a model in an identical version to the one she is found wearing.

The colour would have suited her, he finds himself thinking dimly, the hue echoing the deep velvet of the Grecian night sky.

.

Serena's voice is broken and coarse over the line, pain and grief grating her vocal chords. She talks in a tumbling stream, words spilling out in ribbons of hoarse whispers. At points she weeps, and when she is able to speak again her voice is a little stronger for a while, as though her tears salve her throat.

How could this happen? she asks repeatedly. How could it happen? She was a strong swimmer, confident in the water, and all the reports say the weather was calm that night, the sea flat as a mirror. How could this happen, Dan? How?

Although Serena is three thousand miles away, he finds himself stupidly shrugging his shoulders in response. "I'm sorry," is all he can stutter back. And he is. He's so, so sorry. He's never been sorrier. He's paralysed, useless, constricted behind the bars of a cage. He can offer this shattered woman no comfort. He can find none himself. He has nothing.

He can't bring himself to call Chuck.

.

As the days slip unnoticed into night, and the nights unheeded into day, the stream of fresh information gradually slows. The voracious news cycle spins on to devour a new scandal, to chew upon the bones of a fresh tragedy. A hurricane hits an archipelago in south-east Asia. The loss of life and destruction of property is devastating, the news anchor informs him. For the first time in his supposedly literary life he grasps a word's full meaning. Devastating. Devastated. Devastation.

He switches the television off; the screen fading to black for the first time in 96 hours. In the suffocating silence which swiftly settles like a spring snowfall, chill and incongruous, he hears the lapping of a distant ocean, vast and bottomless, and the cries of circling gulls.

Quickly, fingers fumbling in urgency, he switches the tv back on.

.

The media's merciless gaze swivels to focus on her once again upon the announcement of the results of the toxicology report. High levels of alcohol and traces of temazepan found in her system. Predictably the rumour mill goes into hyper-drive. New phrases begin to seep into the celebrity sites and magazine headlines:

"Excess"

"Addiction"

"Mental health issues"

"Marriage difficulties"

"Secret lovers"

"Troubled childhood"

In an effort to curtail the most damaging of the circulating stories, the guiding hand of the Grimaldi PR machine encourages the emergence of an alternative narrative: The story of one drink too many; an ill-advised late night swim session; a tragic error of judgement by a beautiful girl: So lucky, so loved, so much to live for.

Louis's mother makes a press statement in which she speaks of her son's grief, the royal family's heartbreak, and pays tribute to her late daughter-in-law's virtues – her selflessness, her empathy with the less fortunate, her effortless grace – painting a canonising portrait which bears so little resemblance to the woman both Humphreys once knew, that Jenny is unable to stifle a mirthless peal of laughter.

.

Restless days become strung-out weeks. Caffeine and stimulants become his desperate weapons against the growing relentless march of Morpheus. When his eyelids close, even for a second, he sees her face floating in black water; her long hair fanned out by the waves; her dark eyes open, accusing, sightless.

He tries not to let his eyelids close.


	8. Chapter 8

The funeral takes place in Monaco. From the couch in Jenny's London loft, the Humphrey siblings watch the live footage as the mourners arrive.

Louis is accompanied by his mother and sister, each wearing exactly the same bred-from-birth expression of blank unreadable gravity.

Eleanor Waldorf stalks from her black limo, the lines of her mouth taut, her skin almost grey against the light-absorbing blackness of her suit. Pressing close to his wife's side trots the diminutive figure of Cyrus Rose. Without its habitual joviality, Cyrus's face looks naked. Unformed, like a child's.

A small quietly dignified family group walks largely unnoticed past the clamouring banks of photographers. Inadvertently, in the background of a shot foregrounded by minor European royalty, a television camera catches a chalk-faced Dorota bending briefly to straighten the hem of her young daughter's skirt while Vanya looks grimly on.

A sudden explosion of flashes and shouts from the gathered paparazzi heralds the appearance of Serena van der Woodsen. Head veiled, dark skirts trailing her ankles, bangles swinging at her wrists, she resembles a grieving gypsy queen. It would be a high fashion moment for the media if it weren't for the strikingly visible bone-white knuckles with which Serena grips the arm of Congressman Archibald; as if she were drowning herself and he were driftwood.

Nate himself looks serious but composed; adept by now at exuding a politician's calculated calm whatever the circumstances. Only people who know him well would notice anything at all in the way he places a protective hand on Serena's back and guides her towards the steps of the Cathédrale de Monaco. Humphrey brother and sister, knowing him as they do, wordlessly catch each other's eyes.

He scans the shots of the mourners' backs as they ascend the steps in search of a familiar broad square of shoulders, but his efforts are futile.

"Chuck's not there," he mutters, to himself more than his sister.

Jenny catches his tone of vague surprise and replies with a long stare loaded with silent meaning before uttering simply, "Neither are you."

.

That night, he lies on the makeshift bed in Jenny's spare room wakefully watching the ceiling. His eyes feel hot, prickly and painful from lack of sleep, yet he steels them open. Forces the tiny muscles to obey his will, so that the spectrums of light which arc across the room, cast through the window by the headlamps of passing cars, don't transform into the searing glares of searchlights on boats. He concentrates his mind to ignore the low constant background hum of the Underground trains in order to prevent the distant rumbling from morphing into the insectile whirring of helicopter blades, swooping low above the surface of a strangely becalmed sea.

Despite his desperate efforts, he slips into a half-dream in which the garment bags containing Jenny's proto-type designs hanging on a rail against one wall, unzip themselves in his fractured imagination to reveal contents more flesh than fabric. Nightmarish echoes of the lumpy black bag resting on a gurney, the shots of which, though brief, the news channels had flashed up again and again and again with a sickening morbid glee.

He's abruptly jerked into consciousness by sharp discordant notes emanating from his phone. He sits up, drenched in sweat, breathing hard, and checks the phone's display. It's 3.30am.

He almost doesn't answer. Then he does.

"Hi Chuck."

There's silence at the other end of the line. It stretches on for vast, vacant, terrible minutes until eventually, with a timbre new and alien, a voice rasps quietly into the gloom. "I know that I lost her years ago. I know that. I just didn't believe it would be forever."

He swallows down the hard stone-like lump the other man's words conjure into his throat.

"No," is all he can manage in reply, "Me neither."

.

Time. There was always going to be time. That was the story he'd written himself after Coney Island, the story he'd never completely let go. The story that if he was patient and waited long enough, then somehow, someday, he'd have time.

Now he has all the time in the world. Chuck too. Now they have forever. Forever to feel her absence. Forever to try to forget.

Forever is a word for fairytales, he thinks. But he's learned that fairytales are really horror stories hiding behind gaudy greasepaint and flimsy scenery. The wolf eats grandma, the emperor's clothes don't exist, the little match girl dies, and the yawning chasm of forever will trap you ever so gently in its gaping empty jaws.

He vows that no-one will ever, ever read fairytales to Daisy.

.

Blithely, with her customary heartless indifference, the wider world keeps turning that winter. Weeks pass and the crocus shoots begin to peek through the ground frost beside the paths in Hyde Park.

She slips from the collective consciousness quietly unnoticed, as if from a room at a party. Her name falls from newspaper headlines, through mid-section comments, until the coroner's report - when it is finally announced - merits only a sidebar.

He reads the verdict over breakfast one February morning.

'Death by misadventure'.

By which they mean; 'by mistake', 'by misstep, 'by miscalculation'.

They know nothing, he thinks later on that day, nothing about her. Nothing at all. He grips his daughter's small hand a little tighter as they stand by the grey water of the Serpentine, throwing bread for the ducks.

He blinks away a vision of tendrils of dark hair floating towards the lake's surface, curling around a face, Pre-Raphaelite and lunar-pale, with dark sightless liquid eyes, and concentrates instead on Daisy's guileless lop-sided smile and temperature of her toes inside her red wellington boots.

.

Many months later, the letter arrives as something of a surprise. The envelope has a hint of old-fashioned eggshell blue, unnecessary and expensive. The paper inside, closely typed with dense legal French. It takes both Humphreys, a French-English dictionary, and the services of Jenny's photographer friend, Arnaud, to decipher its meaning. Even then, the gist seems too fantastical to be true. It's only once he's spoken to the senior partner of the firm cited on the letterhead – who thankfully speaks fluent stately English - and received confirmation that their pieced-together translation is accurate, that he permits himself to think about the implications which lie behind the words.

A weak warm May gust accompanies the arrival of the parcel containing the deeds and a set of keys.

He calls Freya and asks if he can have Daisy for a whole week, the week after next. Oh, and he'll need her passport.

They're going to Paris.

.

The apartment is on the top two floors of a grand eighteenth-century building on a discretely fashionable street in the 6th arondissement, just a stone's throw from the Jardin du Luxembourg.

The downstairs rooms are elegant and refined. There's a delicate duck egg blue salon for receiving visitors furnished with tastefully selected French antiques; a small gilded dining room for intimate entertaining, a Parisian-style kitchen stocked with enamel dishes and jars of herbs; and – his favourite – a well-stocked library, where leather-bound classics vie for space on the floor-to-ceiling dark wood shelves and occasional tables with well-thumbed modern paperbacks, neatly piled stacks of literary and arts journals and carefully catalogued editions high-fashion glossies. He's glad to know she never fully embraced an e-reader, preferring, like him, to cleave to paper.

But it's the suite of rooms on the upper floor that capture his heart, retaining an impression of her spirit so immediate, so vibrant, so unmistakeably *her*, that he constantly expects the door to open at any moment and for her to waltz through, dropping bags of shopping, pulling off gloves, tilting a cheek to the sunlight which floods through the rooms' many windows and laughing with delight.

.

He understands what it means. This apartment was her consolation. Her stolen freedom. Her snatched happiness. It is her gift. Her apology. Her open heart. Her goodbye.

.

Three weeks later, he can no longer stand being surrounded by all the once-tiny unimportant details of her life – the hairs remaining on the brush, the half-used tube of toothpaste, the jasmine scented perfume on the dressing table, the delicate silk nightdresses and stockings neatly folded in the chest of drawers - details which have grown heavy and swollen with intolerable significance.

Desperate, close to suffocation from the paralysis of grief, he manages to pick up the phone and call the only person he's sure will understand what he needs to do and who loved her enough not to shy away from it.

Serena arrives twenty-four hours later, flight bag in hand, blue eyes dark with grief and face filled with compassion. Together they begin the excruciating task of sorting through her possessions. Serena takes the bathroom, consigning used make up and half-empty bottles of shampoo to the garbage; silk bathrobes and slippers to charity.

He makes a start on the lounge, sorting volumes from the bookshelves into 'keep' and 'giveaway' and stacking seemingly endless copies of French, Italian, British and US Vogue and their blank-eyed cover girls into piles destined for recycling.

They both tackle the bedroom, Serena taking the wardrobe; he the bedside table. Her presence is strongest in this room. Her scent lingers in the bed covers and on the collars of her blouses. Each pair of shoes in the closet bear ghostly impressions of the contours of her feet.

Intermittently, one of them will come across an item that renders them winded with the empty aching chasm of loss or memory, and the other will hold them until the worse has passed.


	9. Chapter 9

Serena stays on in Paris for longer than he expects, even accompanying him on the Eurostar to London to pick up Daisy, entertaining the little girl on the journey back to the Gare du Nord with crayons and colouring books, putting on silly voices to act out plays with her toy animals, and letting Daisy's little hands twist the ends her long blonde hair.

Serena is still easy company, her presence a warm and comforting reminder of a safer, better past.

They take Daisy for walks in the Jardin du Luxembourg and share cheese fondue like tourists at street cafes, both females giggling like two-year olds as strings of warm cheese wrap themselves unflattering around their forks and faces.

He finds himself wearing an unforced smile for the first time in months and he considers, not unpleasantly, what life might be like if it were always like this. For a long time in their youth Serena had been the one. Maybe he'd been denying the inevitable, maybe this was fate's long-winded way of bringing them both back where they started. As if life - as if she - had never happened.

.

One sunny afternoon, they are drinking black coffee outside a café in the Latin Quarter, both keeping careful eyes on Daisy as she clumsily chases pigeons around the nearby fountain, her sturdy toddler steps echoing on the cobblestones. Serena frequently interrupts their conversation to leap up and guide Daisy away from potential danger, such as passing dogs, or potential faux-pas, like pulling at the skirt of the woman at the next table. She'd be a great mom, he thinks to himself with surprise, given that the previous Van der Woodsen generation pretty much wrote the 'how not to parent' handbook.

Serena returns with a vaguely disconsolate Daisy in her arms, the little girl clearly put out at being prevented from exploring their much more fascinating neighbours in favour of spending time with her already-familiar father and his friend. Serena placates Daisy with the promise of a glass of milk which she orders in charming school-girl French from the waiter. He takes in the scene, his daughter and his ex-girlfriend and their easy intimacy, and wonders if he could get used to it.

"You're a natural," he smiles.

"Oh, not really. It's not hard when they're this good-natured. I expect she takes after you. I bet you were a sweet kid too."

"Not the way my dad tells it."

Serena laughs in response, glancing up with a polite smile and a quick 'Merci' as the waiter brings Daisy's milk.

"Listen, Serena, this is probably wildly inappropriate and I have no right to ask, but…." He regrets beginning the sentence as soon as he starts, trailing off uncomfortably. Luckily for him she doesn't seem to notice, choosing the same time to start a portentous utterance of her own.

"I have something to tell you," she bites her lip in that Serena-like way of hers she has when she's trying to charm you into accepting a plan she feels you might not like. "I've been waiting for the right time, until things weren't quite so…raw," she continues, searching for her words.

She forces her gaze to meet his eyes and says quietly, "Nate asked me to marry him."

"Wow. Oh my god. Serena that's… great. That's wonderful news. I'm so happy for you." And as the words leave his lips he knows that they are true. He feels nothing but happiness for her and for Nate, bar – unexpectedly - relief for himself. Serena's not his fate and he's not Serena's, Nate is. Of course. It makes perfect sense. They make perfect sense.

Serena looks a little sheepish.

"You did say yes?"

"Of course! I'm just… I was expecting you'd tease me. You know, given my track record. Tell Nate to run for the hills."

"Third times the charm, eh?" he grins, wickedly. She rolls her eyes, good humouredly, expecting nothing less.

"I've got to call Nate and congratulate him. What time is it on the East Coast?"

She looks even more bashful. "He's not on the East Coast. He's here. Has been for two days," she sees his look of surprise and hurries on, "I asked him not get in touch because I wanted to be the one to tell you, and somehow between clearing the apartment and looking after Daisy and making sure you were okay, I hadn't quite found the moment."

He smiles his thanks. "You and Nate don't have to tip-toe around the rest of us. Something… awful happened, but you shouldn't have to apologise for your own happiness." He leans over and claims his daughter, folding her into his arms. "Daisy and I are delighted for you. Call Nate and get him here now, I'm going to order champagne." He's about to call the waiter when another thought occurs, "Wait, this means if Nate does become President, you'll be the First Lady of the United States of America."

"I know! Hilarious and terrifying, right?"

"Well, for the first time in my life I'm seriously considering voting Republican."

Serena swipes him with her napkin and moves to get her phone from her bag. She pauses. "Do you think Blair would be happy for us? It's stupid, but I kinda feel that… I'm stealing one of her old dreams."

"She'd be happier than anyone," he says firmly, thinking about a story he once wrote.

"I'm glad you think so, because I've something else to ask," Serena shifts her sky blue gaze to his daughter, "I'd really like Daisy to be my flower girl at the wedding."

"I think she'd like that. I'll have to check with Freya, of course, but thank you. It's really kind of you."

"Nonsense, you're family." He's never before felt so grateful to be Serena Van der Woodsen's family. He's not sure how - if - he would have got through the last few weeks without her, without her innate kindness, compassion and light preventing him from sinking into the darkness.

Fifteen minutes later Nate appears, his love for Serena shining steadily on his face the moment his eyes alight on hers. The three of them share champagne and raise glasses to toast both 'the Archibalds' and 'the Humphreys'.

As Daisy clambers around his neck, he wonders if the others are as aware as he is of the great gaping hole, the yawning empty chasm, alongside them; the absence of the missing piece that should be here squaring off the triangle, lifting a glass to her curved lips and covertly throwing him wry ironic glances.

Nate and Serena discretely slip their fingers together under the table and sneak occasional meaningful lover's looks. He smiles and laughs and drinks to his friends' good fortune, and misses her and misses her and misses her.

.

Six months pass. His home now is her Paris apartment. The date is the 14 January. His twenty-ninth birthday. In two hours he'll meet Daisy at the Gare du Nord; Freya and Mark delivering her like a duffle-coat wrapped present as they pass by en route to a city break in Madrid.

The intercom buzzes, he answers, catches something about a delivery and in his improving French asks the visitor to come up.

He opens the door, buttoning the collar of his shirt, to find the hallway filled with a slight serious-looking woman and two large security guards, an immense wrapped parcel suspended between them.

"Daniel Humphrey?" the woman asks over the top of a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He nods. She continues in lilting French–accented English, "If you could sign the paperwork for the return of this piece." She indicates to the men to enter the apartment with a smart incline of her head, and pushes an official looking form into his hands. He looks baffled. She takes pity and more gently, indicates the places requiring his signature. He signs obediently. Meanwhile, the large rectangular parcel has been deposited on the floor of the lounge, leant against the back of one of Blair's curved Louis XVI chairs.

The woman with glasses advises, "You really should get it professionally hung as soon as possible."

"Get what hung? What is it?"

She gives him a bemused smile that transforms her serious face, infusing it with life, "You don't know?"

She takes a small pocket knife from her bag, kneels and begins to carefully peel away the packing, layer by layer. When she pulls the final protective covering away, his jaw drops.

"That can't be what it looks like."

"It is," she shrugs.

"But it looks like a Rothko."

The woman gives him a shoots him a sceptical look through long delicate lashes. "That's because it is a Rothko. _Untitled_, 1955. It's been on loan to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Australia for their retrospective. The exhibition finished two months ago, and now it is being returned according to instructions."

He stares at the canvas, mesmerised to the extent that he barely takes in her words. Eventually they filter through to his brain, "Whose instructions?"

"Blair Grimaldi, the late Princess of Monaco."

"It's Blair's." Of course. One more in the long line of exquisite possessions diminished in beauty and meaning by her absence.

"It was originally part of the Grimaldi family collection. It was gifted into the Princess's private ownership soon after her marriage."

"But you knew my name. At the door, you had my name."

"Yes, it's on the paperwork and on the Princess's written instructions. She was very specific; the date, the address, the name."

"Wait, she arranged for this to be delivered to _me_, _here_, on my _birthday_?"

"If 14 January is your birthday, then yes."

"It is."

"Bon anniversaire," she smiles, the gesture animating her face again, the delicate lines of her lips forming a cupid's bow.

"Thank you," he mouths numbly.

The guards are already out the door. She retrieves the papers from his hand and begins to make her own exit.

"You're just leaving it here? You can't… I don't have it insured. I mean, it's not mine."

"I don't know about that, Monsieur Humphrey. I'm just returning the painting in accordance with its owner's instructions," she says, not unsympathetically. She indicates to the blank wall. "It used to hang there."

"You've been here before? You knew Blair?"

She nods gently, "I used to help her find pieces occasionally. We went to galleries together. I liked her very much. I was sorry to hear about her accident. She was very young." She adds reflectively, "And often very sad."

Neither know what to say to that.

After a long pause, she breaks the silence with a question, "You're her friend, the writer?"

He gives a short nod, mind now elsewhere. "Sometimes after we'd been to the Louvre, she used to read your stories to me on a bench in the Tuileries. They made her happy, even when they made her cry."

Another even more awkward silence hangs in the air. More for something to do than anything, she digs a business card out of her purse and puts it into his hand, before heading towards the door. She has her hand on the handle when she turns, exclaiming, "I almost forgot! It was in the instructions. I'm also to give you this."

She presses something else into his fingers and, with a quick departing smile that causes a light to flicker in her intelligent grey eyes, leaves.

He's alone again, but now with a priceless Rothko burning a hole in his conscience, and a thick cream envelope burning a hole in his heart.

He holds up the envelope, and at the sight of her familiar flowing letters, he feels his throat constrict and his eyes smart with hot tears.

Fumbling, fingers clumsy with emotion, he slides the card from the envelope and steels himself to read her last missive.

.

"Isla and Rick had Paris. We'll always have Coney Island. But now you should write yourself another life; just don't let it be only on paper this time – don't waste the ninth life.

I hope you like your birthday present.

Love then, now and forever, Blair. "

And on the card's reverse...

"P.S. Her name is Audrey. No, really. Even you couldn't make that up.  
>P.P.S. In case you're still enough of an idiot not to get her phone number, it's 48 04 37 96."<p>

.

Astonished, bemused, his eyes lift from the card to stare dazedly at the Rothko.

That woman. That incredible, argumentative, tactless, elitist, narcissistic, hilarious, intelligent, stimulating, exhilarating, captivating, dangerous, lonely, lost, desperate, self-destructive, endlessly surprising woman.

A sudden, sharp, genuine laugh breaks through the still air. The sound is so unfamiliar it takes him a second to realise it's his.

**The End.**


End file.
